On 17 December Peter Beinart hosted an online discussion entitled, ‘Professors Alan Johnson and Leila Farsakh on whether Israel is a Settler-Colonial State.’ He was joined by special guests Leila Farsakh, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Professor Alan Johnson, editor of Fathom. Prof. Farsakh is the author of the new book, Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition, and explained why the settler-colonial framework makes sense. Professor Johnson recently published an open letter in Fathom ‘”Can’t you see he’s fooled you all”:An Open Letter to Peter Gabriel et al explaining why Israel is not a ‘Settler Colonial’ society’. These online discussions are for paid subscribers to The Beinart Notebook. To become a paid subscriber, please visit: https://peterbeinart.substack.com/
January / 2022
Is Israel a ‘Settler-Colonial’ State? A debate between Alan Johnson and Leila Farsakh
by
Most read
- Statistically Impossible: A Critical Analysis of Hamas’s Women and Children Casualty Figures
By Tom Simpson, Lewi Stone and Gregory Rose - Iran is slowly surrounding Israel with a ‘ring of fire’: On the West’s ongoing appeasement of Tehran and refusal to see plain the IRGC’s transnational Jihad
By Kyle Orton - From Stalin to Hamas: The Return of the Left that Doesn’t Learn? | An Interview with Mitchell Cohen
By Mitchell Cohen - Those Who Tried: Conversations with the Peace Processors | Episode 2: ‘Arafat could never end the conflict… his identity was shaped by struggle’ – A conversation with Dennis Ross
By Dennis Ross - Iran’s ‘successful’ attack vs Israel – a blessing very effectively disguised
By Calev Ben-Dor
Voice of the Week
Our Voice of the Fortnight is from the Times of Israel's 'Wartime Diaries' podcast. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Shai Davidai – an Assistant Professor at Columbia University – became an unlikely public defender of Israel. And truthfully, even he was surprised by this turn of events: As a committed left-wing Israeli, he had spent years criticizing the government, and often took to the streets to demonstrate against its policies. But the atmosphere he witnessed on college campuses (and specifically on his own campus at Columbia), compelled him to speak up and speak out.
Leila Farsekh has got Herzl and many other peoples wrong as regards religious and national groups. Peoples considered themselves as a combination of both eg the four nations of Britain each have their own variety of Christianity as well as their own geographical location and national identity. It was the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in particular that separated religion and nation state and relegated religion from being an element of civil state citizenship and identity to a private choice. Herzl merely said that model was not working for non-Christians ie Jews and since Moslem immigration Moslem extremists have agreed in reinserting religion into the legitimacy of government.
Finally the Arabs created the Arab World by settler colonialism and differential rights followed by the Turks and Moguls. The Arab refusal to make a peace on half a dozen occasions which has caused their problems and they have to admit their errors instead of blaming Israel ALL the time.